Sgt. Rock

Joe Kubert, the comics artist and educator who died Sunday in Morristown, N.J., at age 85, was never the superstar name — his work didn’t have the necessary bombast or polished edges — but the man who drew ragged, soulful soldiers in “Sgt. Rock,” “G.I. Combat” and “Star-Spangled War Stories” did something his characters would have admired: Kubert marched further and longer than anyone else and proved himself a natural leader. Kubert died of multiple myeloma, according to a family statement, and leaves behind a legacy spread across comic books published in eight different decades and built into the walls of the Kubert School, in Dover, N.J., which was founded in 1976. The school is the nation’s only accredited trade school for comic book artists and its inspiration came from Kubert’s earliest days in the business when he was a pre-teen protegé in a comic book production shop in […]

Just got off the phone with Johnny Depp and although there was plenty to chat about — with “Rango,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” “Dark Shadows” and “The Lone Ranger” at various stages in the pipeline — I had to sneak in a comic-book question. When he was growing up in South Florida, did he have a stack of favorite comic books in a corner of his bedroom? “Oh yeah. I was a rock ‘n’ roll kid, mainly, but prior to age 12, when the rock ‘n’ roll sort of took hold, I was a comic-book head. I liked Sgt. Rock. And I loved the Sub-Mariner. I loved Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner.” I told Depp he’s in good company when it comes to admiring Bill Everett’s imperious sea king — last year Clint Eastwood told me Namor was also his […]

Producer Joel Silver says the long-discussed Hollywood adaptation of the “Sgt. Rock” combat comic books has new life — but the leader of Easy Company won’t be fighting the good fight in 1940s Europe this time around. Silver said the plan now is for the old warhorse of DC Comics to serve his country in the not-too-distant future. The idea of a future battlefield setting has reinvigorated a property that has flirted with the big screen for decades. “I’m really close on that now,” Silver said of the “Sgt. Rock” film. “What we’ve done is gone back to it and we’ve done a new draft that actually came in this week. We have a shot at that one now. I feel good about it. That one might happen.” The army sergeant celebrated his 50th anniversary last year — Rock’s first appearance was in “Our Army […]